For as long as I can remember, whenever the bananas in the house would start to speckle, my mother would threaten us with something that was really no threat at all. She’d say that if we didn’t eat the bananas, she would be forced to bake banana nut bread. As you can see, I had it pretty tough growing up 🙂
Fast forward to this week. I’m all grown up and have now allowed my own bananas to turn brown in my own apartment, but that voice in my head is thankfully still there. “I guess you’ll just have to bake banana nut bread then,” it said. And since I wasn’t brought up to disobey, I had received my next challenge. I could think of no more fitting a recipe to use as my first foray into the baking world than my mother’s banana nut bread recipe.
And we’re off!
In here we have 2 1/2 cups flour, 1 1/14 tsp baking powder, 3/4 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp cinnamon, 3/4 tsp salt, a pinch of nutmeg and cloves.
In this bowl we have 1/4 cup buttermilk, 1 1/2 cups bananas (I used 3 bananas) and 1 tsp vanilla.
And in this big bowl, we have 1/2 cup butter, 3/4 cup brown sugar and 1/2 cup white sugar. Mix all this together, then add 3 room temperature eggs one at a time.
Once smooth, add half of the banana mixture and half the dry ingredients, mix-eems in, and then repeat.
Once everything is mixed smoothly, fold in the nuts. I'm from Texas, so yeah, these are pecans.
Into a loaf pan and then into a 350 degree oven for an hour to seventy minutes (just keep an eye on it after an hour).
Take it out when it has reached your personal level of done. As for me (and my Momma!) we likes it crunchy 🙂
Now I don’t know that it was just like hers… you see, there’s an extra special ingredient that it seems only mothers know how to use properly, but someday I’ll get that one too. As for now, I know she’s looking down saying, “Now that looks like some pretty damn good banana nut bread!” 🙂 And it was. Thanks, Mom.
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